A light-skinned Muslim doctor’s hostility emerges only when his Muslim name is revealed.

Evidence

Muslim men rarely told me they were surveilled for their cultural values the way Muslim women who wear the hijab were. However, there was one interview where Saleem, a Lebanese American doctor, told me of an encounter he had with a nurse and a patient that highlighted this dichotomy of the “good” and “bad” Muslim. Although he was born in Lebanon, Saleem is an American-born citizen because his father was naturalized. He moved to Chicago to complete his medical residency. He told me people think he is a European immigrant when they encounter him because he has a lighter skin tone. He said that when they realize he has a Muslim name, their interactions became more hostile. He recalled an incident where his patient demanded a new doctor after he realized that Saleem was a Muslim by reading his name tag. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 288

Categorization

• XREF: The surname-triggered switch from assumed European to suspect Muslim is the precise mechanism of religious racialization — parallels Beydoun on the Muslim ban’s focus on names and appearance.
• SEED: The patient demanding a new doctor over a name tag is a micro-incident that could anchor a short piece on how racialization operates in professional service encounters.